The Day After The Death Star
by Joysweeper
Summary: Based on the comic of the same name, on the day after the Death Star Luke Skywalker goes on a joyride and wrestles with loss and the consequences of his own impulsiveness.


The party was over. Every dram of alcohol to be found on Yavin IV had long been consumed, every exultant phrase exchanged, and even the most determined table of card players had folded for the night. By the gray hours of predawn, everyone had retired.

Everyone but Luke. Someone - there were so many new people, most of the names he'd heard tonight were a blur - had shown him to a room, but he still couldn't sleep. He'd climbed up through the temple, only slightly unsteady from the toasts he'd been a part of, and now he stood out atop the stone structure.

It was cooler now, at night, though warmer than night on Tatooine. A lot wetter, too, and the humidity and lack of sand made his skin feel strange. At home - he shoved that thought away and looked up at the great curved shape of the gas giant Yavin, glowing magnificently with the light of the system's one star, which was just starting to rise.

It really was beautiful. Before him, past the old temple grounds that the Rebels had cleared, the jungles stretched out, vine-wrapped trees reaching up through the mist. They weren't as quiet as he'd expected; he could hear animals calling out to each other, sometimes crashing about in the growth.

All of it, still here, totally oblivious to the fate it had escaped. The fate he had saved it from.

What a night! Was this what it felt like to be a hero? They'd called him that, in the celebration. Funny... he'd been dreaming for so long about just this. Even if he showed them the medal, none of his friends would ever believe him, no matter what he swore to, even the stars themselves... even Biggs would -

"Blast it," he said out loud. Luke swung his fist into his open hand to hear the smack of it. "I can't just stand around watching the dawn. I've got to do something..." He wanted to shout. Instead he wheeled, ran back into the temple and tore his way down steps, raced across floors, fidgeted like a child while waiting on lifts until he was all the way down at the hangar level.

Luke switched the lights on. They hadn't moved all of the surviving X-Wings and other craft since they'd been brought in - the X-Wing he'd taken up against the Death Star - who had it belonged to before? Taz something? - was right where he'd left it. It was battered, but it had a kind of expectant air. Luke reached up and stroked the pitted nose of the snubfighter.

"You could do it again, couldn't you? Despite the hits... the damage to the droid socket..." He smiled. "If Artoo were with us, we could do it again in an instant, right?"

Actually... Luke stepped back. X-wings didn't actually need astromechs, did they? For calculating hyperspace jumps, and for making emergency repairs, yes. Probably other things, but... not for a quick flight. Just an hour or so. He'd done it back home all the time, taking his skyhopper... the skyhopper...

The mechanics hadn't worked on the X-wing much, but it had still been spaceworthy when he'd brought it in, and there was fuel. Luke didn't bother trying to rouse someone to help him with it - he just shrugged into a spare flight suit and helmet and within fifteen minutes he was out of the hangar, flying a dangerous two or three meters above the jungle canopy.

No one challenged him over his comm unit. He was a little surprised, but shrugged. Maybe the Rebels just weren't all that careful about their ships leaving unexpectedly. Maybe whoever was on watch had fallen asleep. Maybe he'd talk to someone about it later - but for now, he was on a joyride.

The X-Wing's controls were almost the same as his skyhopper's, but the fighter had so much more power to it than any airspeeder Luke had ever been in before. Yesterday, shortly after landing on Yavin IV, he'd been tossed into an X-wing simulator and had put it through its paces, and now Luke executed some of the same playful rolls and turns he'd tried out at first then.

The fighter was up to it. Heart pounding with anticipation, Luke pulled back on the stick and opened the engines up, tipping the craft up at an angle and flying up and out at the night sky. He watched the gauges as he went through layer after layer of atmosphere, fighting the pull of gravity, and at last!

The transition was smooth, but Luke imagined he could feel a lurch as he escaped the moon's gravity and the internal compensators kicked in. He opened up the S-foils and exhaled happily, looking out through the canopy at the stars. They were so much clearer without atmosphere in the way! There hadn't been time to appreciate them, the other two times - but now he had no pressing emergency, and he could savor the feeling of being out in space, in a powerful snubfighter.

This... was what he was born to do. Soon the Rebel Alliance would put him on a real mission - another challenge. It didn't matter where - somewhere, among all those stars. He'd finally see all those places he'd dreamed about - Kessel and the Maw, Centerpoint Station, Dac, Geonosis, Imperial Center. They'd find a use for him. Soon he'd be leading the attack on a Star Destroyer, or assaulting a base, or - or taking on Darth Vader, assuming he'd survived. Paying him back for all he'd taken from Luke - his family, his friends -

The X-wing's computer beeped. Startled, it took a moment before Luke could pull himself together enough to read the screens.

There was a TIE fighter! Incredulous, Luke sent the X-wing into a snap-roll just a moment before it fired on him, twisting around in the cockpit to try and see through the windows. It was just visible with the naked eye, a pale gleaming toy among the stars, but it was closing fast, still firing, sticking with Luke even as he went evasive. The TIE followed him through an elaborate sequence of twists and turns, whittling away at his shields while Luke sweated. Where had he come from? Was he a leftover from yesterday? Had to be!

Eventually, his shields in tatters, Luke managed to somehow get behind the TIE, but his lasers wouldn't fire! He clicked uselessly at the trigger, automatically turning to keep the enemy in his sights. He hadn't checked the X-wing's systems! Stupid! Of course the lasers weren't firing, he hadn't energized them!

There was only one way to keep the TIE from getting behind him again and vaping him out of the sky. Luke rerouted all available power to the engines and felt his fighter leap forwards in a suicidal plunge, its S-foils hooking into the TIE's hexagonal wing.

The contact points didn't break off so much as disintegrate, and the X-wing lurched violently and went into a spin back towards Yavin IV. Luke's cockpit came alive with alarms. "Artoo, shut those off!" he said before he remembered that he was alone.

He fought the controls all the way down, feeling his poor abused fighter vibrate back through the atmosphere, crisscrossing the smoke trail the TIE had left a minute before. Luke did everything he could, things he wouldn't even have thought of, and was able to wrench the path from a steep angle to something almost level. The upper branches of trees cracked and broke against the fighter as it skipped off the jungle canopy. Pieces were coming off, he knew it, but he was slowing-

-and then Luke came to the end of the trees, and his X-wing plunged nose-first into murky water. Luke saw a blinding light, and then nothing.

Time passed.

Other than the ringing in his ears, it was quiet. Animals called out in the distance. Water dripped and hissed against hot metal. Luke blinked. The X-wing was stuck into the mud at the bottom of the pool - the pond or swamp, or whatever it was. But most of the canopy was still above the water. He popped it open manually, letting a brownish flood in, and with difficulty climbed out.

It was day. The water here was around waist deep, with soft sucking mud underneath that went a lot deeper, judging from his X-wing. A great plume of smoke and steam rose from its raised aft end, adding an acrid note to the rotting green smell all around. Luke trudged towards the shore.

"Han told me any landing you can walk away from is a good one," he groused. He didn't like being surrounded by water like this, all stagnant and mysterious. It was too much like the trash compactor on the Death Star. "I bet this one would make him change his - ugh!" Luke had taken a misstep over a tiny submerged cliff and into deeper water, water that came to his chin. It was seeping into his flight suit. Disgusted, he took a few tries to get back up the cliff and picked his way more carefully to the shore, which for several steps still squished underfoot. It was firmer under the first few trees.

The comlink in his helmet wasn't working, he found. Completely dead. He looked at it, but he'd never studied comm systems and had no idea what was wrong. Luke heaved his helmet away into the undergrowth and stripped his sodden flight suit off, gloves and all. When it came to bad luck he didn't miss a shot, he thought sourly. How could he have been such an idiot?

Luke closed his eyes. At any other time he would have wanted to go explore. This was a new world, one he'd never gotten to see. He was even among trees. But right now... What was he even doing here in this mudhole? He was off schedule - he'd missed days of work! Uncle Owen would've had to work long to cover the vaporators on the south ridge, and he hated doing it. Luke had to get back and -

But there was no back.

Uncle Owen was dead. Aunt Beru was dead. He'd seen their charred bodies, what was left when the Imperials were through. Under the green smell here, he thought something of that reek stayed with him. They were gone, and all home with them.

Luke's breath came ragged and short. His head bowed. They were dead. He'd disagreed with them on so many things, but he could never doubt that they loved him. They were the only parents he'd ever known. But he'd argued with them, and lied to them, and... they were gone.

He hadn't thought about them since he'd buried their bodies. He had tried, he had tried so hard not to think about them. But now-

- Luke felt the heat of the blast before he really saw it; a blaster bolt hitting the dirt besides him and throwing up a cloud of dirt. He flung himself back and away, into the brush, and picked himself up into a crouch to see an armed human shape crashing towards the place he'd just been. Clad in a black flight suit, with a helmet like a stormtrooper's but black and with visible breathing tubes.

The TIE pilot. He must have landed before Luke and come after that plume of steam! Well, it was Luke's advantage now! He reached for his hip-

Nothing. He'd taken the blaster off for the party. Left himself disarmed. Luke had even left his father's lightsaber back in the temple. Idiot, idiot...

No time to curse himself now. The enemy surveyed Luke's discarded orange flight suit - it occupied him for the instant it took for Luke to bantha-rush him and slam into him, wrestling for the man's blaster. He'd surprised his foe, but Luke wasn't a big man and the the enemy's life support gear and armor kept him from doing much damage - and as he tried to pry away the blaster, the Imperial's legs set and drove both of them back into the water.

Reeking dark water closed over Luke's head and the blaster fell away, forgotten. He couldn't see. Hands clutched him, kept him from the surface. He thrashed, straining, for an instant convinced that the trash monster had him again, but this was only a man, how could - yes! Imperial pilots carried their own life support, of course they didn't have to worry about breathing water. Luke scrabbled desperately to find his enemy's helmet, fingers catching on the air hoses. The enemy knew what he wanted and tried to stop him, but with a savage pull Luke disconnected a hose and felt the rush of bubbles against his hand.

The Imperial convulsed in panic; Luke could feel it even as his face broke the surface and he gasped for air. His enemy was going to drown. A dark part of Luke said, I won't let it be that easy. His feet found the murky bottom and rocks in it, and step by furious step he dragged himself and the enemy up onto the shore.

He shoved the coughing Imperial out face up and kicked that black helmet so it came off. Imperial! They'd killed Luke's family. They'd killed Ben Kenobi, who'd been like another uncle to him. They'd killed his father, they'd killed his best friend, they'd killed all those pilots yesterday, killing was all they knew. Well, he knew it too, didn't he. Luke hefted a fist-sized stone. It had a sharp edge.

The man lying out before him groaned, his eyes screwed shut, covered in muck. For the first time, Luke looked into his enemy's bare face.

It was...

In pain and only semi conscious, there was nothing hateful or murderous about the Imperial pilot. He looked like... He was young, about Luke's age. He could've been one of Luke's friends. Biggs had gone to one of the Imperial flight academies, hadn't he, and trained as a pilot there?

Oh, what was he going to do about Biggs? The Darklighters didn't even know their boy was dead. Someone would have to tell them. They had to know.

And this pilot...

"No," Luke said quietly. All of his anger was gone. He dropped the stone.

He hadn't thought about this. He'd never thought about it, never thought past the glory and the adventure of it. But the enemy was like him. They were living, breathing people behind their armor and spacecraft, people who had their own friends and families.

They were people too. On the Death Star, there had been he didn't even know how many people. Luke had seen some tiny percentage of them when he and Han had gone after the Princess.

With their loss... How many had been left as bereft as Luke was? He had nothing, now, but a future as bright as it was uncertain. Maybe he'd be able to fill it. He hoped so. But for now... it was empty. He had lost everything.

He couldn't just kill someone. Not when it could be avoided. Or he would be just as bad as they were, at their worst. None of the people he'd lost would want it. They'd want him to fight harder, to fight on... of course they would... but they wouldn't want that. It hurt to think of it, but at the same time it was almost a relief.

Luke checked the pilot's vital signs and was reasonably sure the man wouldn't die. He stripped off the man's bulky life support and armor and relieved him of a small knife that had been in a pocket, then tied the pilot's hands in front of him with strips cut from his Alliance flight suit. If the pilot woke up, Luke didn't want to have to fight him again.

That done he left the pilot under a tree and circled around the edge of the... whatever this body of water was. Luke's crashed ship was still visible, but the site where he'd fought and left the pilot wasn't.

Someone would find him. His X-wing was still spilling a tower of steam out into the air, and they could track it - no doubt he had been noticed leaving the hangar, after all, but with his comm not working he hadn't heard anything. They'd find him. For now he was alone.

Luke sank to the ground and wrapped his arms around his knees and, at long last, let himself grieve.


End file.
